


may avenue

by canisspiritus (renardroi)



Series: i feel it in my bones [2]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: M/M, Urban Magic Yogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 20:17:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3742273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renardroi/pseuds/canisspiritus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On May Avenue there’s a bench facing east. It’s cold, ribbed metal, and it’s sat next to a dark green lamp post that bows and casts yellow light, it’s color and shape making it look like it sprouted there some years ago, perhaps planted by someone else who used to sit at the bench regularly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	may avenue

On May Avenue there’s a bench facing east. It’s cold, ribbed metal, and it’s sat next to a dark green lamp post that bows and casts yellow light, it’s color and shape making it look like it sprouted there some years ago, perhaps planted by someone else who used to sit at the bench regularly. 

Will visits this spot from time to time, when the city is quiet enough to venture out of his hobbit hole shop, and when sleep seems to be just out of reach, dashing away and just out of his grasping hands, leaving only the afterimage of a white tail disappearing into the distance. Some nights he can bring himself to knock back an equally white pill and force himself down the rabbit hole of strange dreams and not knowing if his alarm will wake him or if it’ll be noon by the time he peels the heavy covers off of his body and rubs the life back into a numb limb or two. Other nights, when he wants to scream out of frustration - because of white tails or white noise - he picks himself up, wraps himself in suitable clothing, and trips and falls out his door and winds up here. 

It always feels a bit like a mistake, like he meant to walk himself down to the 24-hour drugstore and buy a water bottle and a pack of gum - just something to do - but as soon as he crosses his threshold and the hum of the city comes rushing up to greet him, he knows. 

It’s an oddity, isn’t it? It looks like it belongs in a park, the way it’s decorated, with armrests shaped like vines and leaves, and the back curving to the shape of his spine almost perfectly. For a heartbeat it could be mistaken for a bus stop, but there are no signs, and he knows the buses in these cities like the back of his hand, it only takes a toe in the shallow end of information to check if there’s a bus stop on May Avenue (there isn’t). And the bench sits uncomfortably close to the street. A foot of space between it and the curb, and his knees stick out further than that, so it’s a foot of space between his knees and rushing cars. It’d be scarier during the day, but at two or three in the morning, the cars aren’t  _absent_ , but there are a little less of them, and they’re a little less antsy - anxious, trying to get somewhere quickly, caught up in the energy of the city. 

Why here? Who decided? Who put pen to paper and had a bench put on this particular street, in front of these particular buildings - which were nothing, just apartments and an office or two, nothing and everything - and who approved and paid for it? 

He’s had to force himself to stop asking these kinds of questions. Short of bursting into city hall and demanding answers, he probably won’t ever know. And even if he made the trip, who’s to say city hall will know either? It’s such an insignificant bench - and it looks old, old enough for the paperwork to have been lost, back when there  _was_  paperwork.

This kind of space, it’s a web, white and spidery, dewy in the morning, and sticky, clinging to the kind of questions and thoughts that it draws to the surface of your mind. If he didn’t shake himself free, and swear off the existential and painfully curious questions, he could find himself sitting here until dawn, having not moved or thought of anything besides the unanswerable and the unimportant. It feels like a bad idea. It feels like a trap. 

It doesn’t help that the shadows watch him. They curl around the lamp post and shiver, the light flickering in the dark. What do they want? Why do they watch? No. It’s no use to ask these kinds of things.

Instead he sits down, crosses his legs on the park bench that’s not a park bench, and works. He brings his notebooks and schedules and sketchbooks, and writes and plans and draws. White paper turns grey and blue and black, like bruises from his fingertips, but in the end they’ve fulfilled their purpose. Paper wards, thin and delicate, with printed and handwritten runes that keep the space from sticking to him and his thoughts, that keep the curious shadows at bay, that keep him sane while the city buzzes in his mind and tails fade into the distance - not to be seen until tomorrow night. 

Numbers are the best wards, he finds. One night he fills the pages with them; 8.875% of 5.63 is 0.4996625 (rounded up to 0.50), 1200 plus 230 equals 1430 times 12 equals 17160 plus 650 equals 17810, and so on, and so on. The more he writes, the more it seems like the space around him seems to sigh, bored of his runes and odd, papery wards. The wind sighs, ruffling the spot of hair that’s not covered by the cap he’s placed very loosely on his head. The bench sighs, almost feeling like it’s sagging inward and curling around him tiredly. The lamp sighs, like someone’s blowing into white ash and embers, it glows brightly for a moment before dimming back to it’s normal glow.

He does his taxes, keeps track of his money, figures prices for his shop, writes lines and lines of code for programs just because he can. Dates work too, not quite as well, because you get things like  _February 17th_ , and  _Appt on Thurs the 9th_ , a sort of mesh of words and numbers, and the shadows can slither closer some nights if he writes some of the more powerful dates down. Like  _Xephos B-Day_  within one of the squares on his planner, underlined and circled twice, or when he circles the full moon in the corner of a square and writes _Necklace Charm!!!_  in red ink. 

On nights when he feels the city beneath him, like walking on a springboard with no intention to jump, when he doubts the reassuring presence of gravity, like one wrong step could mean his feet - the only thing keeping him grounded - are pushed from the pavement and he finds himself floating in all-consuming space, on  _these_ nights, the numbers are everything. 

On nights when he is so painfully heavy, it’s tiring to stand, to walk, exhausting to even breathe, but he still finds his hands closing around the air where the fluffy tail was, just a blink before, he sets his pencil to his sketchbook and scratches endlessly and aimlessly, and he lets the shadows creep closer. The lamplight flickers, the metal of the bench is loveless and cold, and the shadows - the  _shadows_. He can  _feel_  them, shadows curling around his arms, around his neck, against his cheek. He shivers in the cold. The flesh under his fingernails turns purple, his nose is pink, he breathes white condensation. He shivers, the shadows kiss his skin - tips of his fingers, tip of his nose, his lips - there’s a feather light breeze on his neck and he  _shivers_. 

Can’t come back, can’t go back, not after that. Will goes home. Home is warm, the shop is warm, coats, scarves, tea and coffee are warm. Flesh is warm. The sun is warm. Can’t go back,  _isn’t_  going back - 

He trips and finds himself sitting on a bench, watching the sunrise while he draws in his sketchbook.

**Author's Note:**

> Bright lights, big city,  
> Was quite extraordinary.
> 
> If anyone asked (and no one did) he's calculating the sales tax on something that costs 5.63, and then also the thing after that is like monthly rent/expenses type thing. shrug?


End file.
